Catholic Church ignored women, nun tells inquiry

Joanne McCarthy

The Catholic Church was ''patriarchal'', had regarded women as useful for ''cooking the Sunday lunch roast'' but not much else, and even today left women feeling ''fairly well overlooked'', a senior nun has told the Special Commission of Inquiry into the Catholic Church and police handling of child sex allegations.

Former Lochinvar Sisters of St Joseph congregation leader Sister Lauretta Baker said she was not a feminist because the word was divisive, but in a short burst of evidence she laid bare how a nun felt about the church and its global child sex abuse crisis.

''I think it's true to say the Catholic Church is as good as it is today because of its religious women, not because of its religious men,'' she told the inquiry in evidence made public on Friday. ''We have endured much, put up with much.''

In the 1980s when the first wave of child sex allegations emerged in America, the Catholic Church had ''little regard for women in general, whom they saw as doing the flowers in the church, washing the altar linen, etc, etc'', she said.

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Asked by counsel assisting the inquiry Warwick Hunt if that included ''cooking the Sunday lunch roast for priests'', Sister Baker replied: ''Yes, and never being part of any decision-making - even any kind of consultation, collaboration.''

The NSW Special Commission of Inquiry, headed by Commissioner Margaret Cunneen, SC, is investigating the Catholic Church and police handling of child sex allegations about the late Hunter priests Denis McAlinden and James Fletcher. Its final report is due in late February.

Sister Baker gave evidence in private at Wallsend on April 19 last year. She finished a five-year term as congregational leader of the Lochinvar Josephites in January.

Asked by Mr Hunt if she had any views about systemic obstacles facing nuns or their superiors who had knowledge or suspicions about clerics ''misbehaving with children'' in the past, Sister Baker replied: ''Yes, I do. Have you got all day?

''Nobody believed that a priest in such a position of trust would act … in a way that we've seen some of them did. They [bishops] wouldn't have believed it, to start with. My conjecture is that they [nuns] would have been patted on the head and ignored.''